Many companies assume that they can rely on overseas distributors or in-house native speakers to translate documentation or localize website content. That can work if done correctly, but usually the process isn’t. People don’t appreciate how difficult translations can be and how long the process can take, particularly for anything technical. And when the home office does not control the message, lots of problems can happen: sentences get deleted, added or rewritten; unknown claims get added that you may be liable for; words get misused or misunderstood; the same term can get translated in many ways or incorrectly; and your branding gets inconsistent and garbled. The best-practices role for qualified native speakers is to act as reviewers of the translations and consultants about in-house terminology, not to do the process themselves.

For the last 26 years Auerbach International Inc. has been translating the technical and marketing collateral of your industry into over 80 languages, with accuracy and effective cultural sensitivity. Over that time we’ve worked with dozens of well-known firms — such as Google, Twitter, Roche, Colgate, Home Depot, and the NBA Golden State Warriors.

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors were playing a series of exhibition games in China against the L.A. Lakers in October 2013. The Lakers already had their website in Chinese, and the Warriors needed their own done well and done quickly. They turned to Auerbach International localize their team name, players’ names and website content in Chinese. That allowed the Warriors to generate pre- and post-game publicity and sales, both in China and among Chinese in the US. Read More

Never! Computer translation programs do help professional translators. They can also be helpful where “lay” people just want to get the gist of a document. But a professional translation still needs to be reviewed by a speaker of that language. For example, a software–generated translation which we had to correct had rendered “a board meeting” into Chinese as “a collection of planks of wood.” An accurate rendering but not quite conveying the correct meaning. At Auerbach International, we use only skilled, native speakers in the translation and editing process to ensure top quality translation. Computers simply cannot get the nuances that a human native speaker can. Please see Machine Translation. Read More